There is a little time capsule of the UI as it was on that exact day, as I recorded a demo video for the Product Hunt submission. You can see how some UI concepts have persisted to this day, even as the details and level of refinement changed. You can also see the original blue accent color... I took that color palette from a website where people posted various color palettes, I do not remember its name anymore.
It's interesting that my bio as seen in the demo said "Developer of Mastodon, a GNU social alternative". That was the level of my ambition at the time: GNU social had a niche, tiny as it may in the grand scheme of things, and it appealed to me, so I just wanted to make something that would be nicer to use. (My original intent was making a TweetDeck-like app for GNU social, but I quickly pivoted into writing my own backend because GNU social's API was a mess and I like things to be neat).
The mascot was born around November 2016 when I asked my #Dota2 friend @dopatwo for an illustration to put on Mastodon's error page. It was meant to be a homage to Twitter's "fail whale". As you can see, the design of the mascot has changed considerably in ten years. It was cute then, but more realistic, less round. I much prefer the contemporary design, and the fact that it's not a single character.
@Gargron As one of the first 5000, I was wondering why you didn’t mention it on the day. Anyway, still glad to be on Mastodon. 😊
@Gargron Well done ahah
Oct 17, 2026, 4:09 PM@Gargron Lovely history! How rewarding and powerful to see how your tiny project has grown up!
The blue may have come from: https://www.colourlovers.com/
@scott Yes!
Oct 18, 2026, 8:09 AM
@Gargron
Congratulations.
Oct 16, 2026, 9:21 PM@Gargron
Colorhunter maybe? That's the one I used to use. Launched by Steve DeGraeve.
Oct 16, 2026, 9:28 PM@Gargron Tweettodon or Mastodeck?
@Gargron Oooohhh, the memories...
The UI wasn't very different when I joined in 2018.
Oct 17, 2026, 6:14 AMThank you @Gargron for all your efforts. Mastodon is the best thing that happened in the social network landscape during the last decade.
Oct 17, 2026, 9:02 PM